Trump to ramp up efforts to secure 2024 Republican nomination after slow start

Donald Trump is scheduled to venture out of his Mar-a-Lago resort and conduct a swing of presidential campaign events later this month, ramping up efforts to secure the Republican nomination after facing hefty criticism over the slow start to his 2024 White House bid, according to sources familiar with the matter.

That has apparently given enough confidence for a host of Republicans to prepare their own White House runs and though Trump says he believes a wide field will be beneficial, he seems set to face possible candidates including the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and ex-cabinet officials such as Nikki Haley.

The campaign has otherwise planned for Trump to gradually increase the number of political events this year, while it first spends time building out the wider political operation with the aim of starting to peak in activity at the start of election year.

The idea, the sources said, is to do the less glamorous but operationally necessary groundwork now, when Trump remains the only declared candidate for the presidency, to build as large a head start as possible for when DeSantis or others formally enter the 2024 fray.

In the weeks since Trump announced his candidacy at Mar-a-Lago last November, the campaign appears to have spent the majority of its time building its fundraising operation based off small-donor lists that his political action committees have amassed since 2016.

Trump has historically had among the best lists in politics and the team has started to transfer the rich data of names, email address, phone numbers and contributions histories over to the campaign.

The campaign has also focused on expanding the pool of potential donors, one source familiar with the matter said. In recent weeks, it has stepped up efforts to identify moderate Republican voters who have supported Trump politically but have not made contributions for possible ad targeting.

Still, Trump has remained attuned to criticism that the campaign had a slow start and appears to have taken steps to make the leadership team for his latest bid for the White House similar to the 2016 team, which featured a group of core aides and advisers.

The campaign is being helmed by Susie Wiles, the top political adviser to Trump for the past two years who helped him win Florida in his previous two presidential bids, and Chris LaCivita, a veteran strategist and former political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Both Wiles and LaCivita are considered seasoned political operatives who know how to run successful campaigns but Wiles in particular is expected to be an asset for 2024 as DeSantis considers a presidential run, given she previously worked as a top adviser for DeSantis.

But even as Trump assembles what Republican operatives consider the gold standard for a presidential campaign team, whether he heeds their advice over the long term remains an issue.

The former president invariably turns to informal advisers on all topics and over the objections of his professional team, particularly when he finds people who might be willing to affirm his own ideas and impulses, or find him convenient exits from otherwise uncomfortable realities.

That theory did not pan out, and the 2024 campaign launch led the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to appoint a special counsel whose prosecutors have in fact been even more aggressive and escalatory than before Trump announced his third bid for the White House, the Guardian has previously reported.

The legal blowback underscores how Trump at times has demonstrated a remarkable ability for self-sabotage, such as when he was waived off taking a meeting with the disgraced rapper Kanye West but did it anyway, and ended up also having dinner with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes.